In the history of art, Henry Matisse is one of the most important-color painters during the modern period, but all the artistic processes Matisse took are rooted in the strong but elegant lines shown in the nude drawings in particular. Odalisque refers to court lady in Turkish palace or woman of harem, which was one of the major themes for Orientalism in the early 19th century, often seen in the works of many painters, including Ingres, Delacroix and Renoir’s.

Since the early 1920’s, when Matisse was staying in southern France, he showed continuous interest for exotic odalisque paintings. He reproduced alluring images of woman out the ladies of harem he met in Morocco or models in oriental clothes. The artist depicted his models in seductive ways and by placing them in front of decorative background, he created the effect of conveying strange but intense forms and colors.

First, Matisse painted with Gaush and cut the paper then attached with pins on the wall. These finished works were stenciled and published as the print book. In the 1947 edition of the book, the arrangements of cut-outs reflect the original display they had on the interior walls of the artist’s residence. Matisse says he could reach higher level of perfection through cut-out during the last 10 years of his life, than he did with paintings or sculptures. Cut-outs provided a solution to his long-standing question of “the eternal conflict of drawing and color.”

In 1919, Matisse was asked by the director of a Russian ballet company to design costumes and stage art for the premiere of 'The Song of the Nightingale.' The plot of the ballet is based on Andersen’s fairy tale that tells a story of a mechanical nightingale, a gift from the Emperor of Japan to the Chinese emperor. In reproducing the court of the Emperor, Matisse used oriental ornaments to decorate costumes for the dancers.

The artist added his original details to historical designs and this resulted in creating costumes that seem surprisingly contemporary even now. Through the design for ‘The Song of the Nightingale,’ Matisse could extend his artistic experiment to stage. He worked on the costumes based on his childhood memories about fabrics in Boen to design patterns, and this also served as an opportunity to try on cut-out technique.

Between 1941 and 1944, Matisse dedicated huge amount of time and energy to work on illustrations for poetry books of the representative French Romantic and Surrealist poets such as Aragon, Mallarmé and Baudelaire. In 1932, Matisse unveiled 29 etchings as illustrations for Mallarmé‘s. The illustrations show an exquisite harmony between Matisse’s soft but clear and implicit lines and the literary purity in the poems of Mallarmé. After this work, Matisse also produced illustrations for many collections of poems including Baudelaire’s (1947) and Ronsard's (1948).